Article: The Burden of Deportation on Children in Mexican Immigrant Families

Article: The Burden of Deportation on Children in Mexican Immigrant Families

The following article was just brought to my attention. It was written by Joanna Dreby, of the University at Albany, State University of New York, and is entitled: The Burden of Deportation on Children in Mexican Immigrant Families. It was published in the Journal of Marriage and Family last year.

From the forward:

In 2011, a record number of foreign-born individuals were detained and removed from the United States. This article looks at the impact enforcement policies have had on Mexican families more broadly and children speciﬁcally. Drawing on interviews with 91 parents and 110 children in 80 households, the author suggests that, similar to the injury pyramid used by public health professionals, a deportation pyramid best depicts the burden of deportation on children. At the top of the pyramid are instances that have had the most severe consequences on children’s daily lives: families in which a deportation has led to permanent family dissolution. But enforcement policies have had the greatest impact on children at the bottom of the pyramid. Regardless of legal status or their family members’ involvement with immigration authorities, children in Mexican immigrant households describe fear about their family stability and confusion over the impact legality has on their lives.

I intend to use this article as evidence in my next cancellation of removal case so I thought I'd share.
Click here to read it in its entirety.

Is the deportation of immigrant men akin to the incarceration of black males? Is the system (by accident or by some incredible genius) making sure that minority families have no males in their households? At a minimum, this separation of men from their wives and children is an insidious side-effect, and at worst, a calculated effort akin to genocide.